Mark E. Smith with Austin Collin gs R E N E G A D E The Lives and Tales of Mark E. Smith photographs by Tom Sheehan Contents Intro Phoenix 2006: Desert Storm! 1. The Power of my Childhood Days 2. Grandad versus King Kong 3. Prelude to Revolution 4. The Phantom Nazis Voices 1 5. The Group/s and their Useless Lives Interlude The Two-Year Gap 6. The Fool, The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor, The Hierophant, The Lovers, The Chariot, Strength, The Hermit, The Wheel of Fortune, Justice, The Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, The Devil, The Tower, The Star, The Moon, The Sun, Judgement, The World and Eric the Ferret Voices 2 7. They Who Dare! 8. The Year of the Rats 9. Silence of the Riley 10. Operation Cavemen! Voices 3 11. The Wife 12. The Devil’s Compass 13. Death of the Landlords 14. A Man Alone 15. Hard as Nails ‘Guide to Manchester’ ‘I’m the History of the World’ ‘Sufficiently Strenuous 2 deter flirts’ ‘My Top’ ‘Words found on a Cassette of 23/01/06’ 16. I’m on the Hard Road Again 17. The March of the Gormless Bastards 18. Crisp Man 19. To Hell and Back Voices 4 Outro The White Angel Acknowledgements Follow Penguin PENGUIN BOOKS RENEGADE Mark E. Smith was born in north Manchester in 1957. He has been the leader and lead vocalist of The Fall for thirty years. In 2001 he married Eleni Poulou. When not touring, they live in Manchester. Austin Collings was born in north Manchester in 1980. He has written for the Guardian, Frieze and Flux, among other publications, and currently lives in Manchester. … both everything and nothing in a person’s past and background may be significant. B. S. Johnson, Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry Somebody’s murdered Manchester and not told me. Somebody’s taken it to the dogs – ripped from it a history. All is as all shouldn’t be. And here’s another one of those signs – ‘Thank G.B. for “The Nocturnes” ’ – weeping with damp … Inside The Lion, posters boast the cheapest drinks this side of a dropped half-empty in the gutter; boast hot pies also. But I won’t be having one of them. Leave the solids for others, I’m a liquid man today … Intro PHOENIX 2006: DESERT STORM! I sensed it long before it happened. They reminded me of the recent England team: the Beckham generation; that lot that fucked up so spectacularly in 2006 because they couldn’t do what they were paid to do; because they couldn’t spend time away from their birds; that lot who couldn’t stop crying. Lads with no guts, I can’t stand them … You’re out there in America playing music, free drink, women, scenery; and you bail out in the middle of the night after the third gig. They’d only been there for a week. I know fellows – so-called scally types – who’d have given their right arm to be in their position. Imagine what other people think of you when they’re sat at home on the dole or sat in the pub and in walks this daft guitarist who didn’t have the mettle to hang in there and see the rest of America. I thought it was hilarious when Ben Pritchard did that interview with Anthony Meirion for the unofficial Fall website, blabbing his heart out. It reminded me of one of those memoirs that politicians love writing: Ben Pritchard: The Fall Years, 2001–2006 … I think he’s going through this phase at the moment where his tolerance for alcohol has just dropped … He’s getting drunk really quickly … He was falling asleep in the dressing room five minutes before we were due onstage … when you’re drunk and in a deep sleep you’re not gonna get up for anyone, y’know … he’s threatened to stab people before for waking him up, y’know. Interview with Ben Pritchard 12 June 2006 http://www.visi.com/fall/news/pritchardint2006.html I knew it was coming. I knew they didn’t have the nerve. Three days in and they’ve got faces like vexed tomatoes, their skins flaking sci- fi style: burnt to fuck. They were an embarrassment; not only to me and the wife and The Fall fans but to their own generation. We wanted to do it and we were prepared to do it and we were looking forward to it but we knew that it was gonna be … it was five weeks and that’s longer than we’ve ever done on tour with this line-up. There was already rifts and things happening when we did the last UK tour. It’s a brutal let-down for a lot of people. They go on tour and it isn’t what they expected. All at once their lives don’t work any more. They’re adrift in more ways than they can handle. It’s not for everyone; twelve-hour drives starting first thing in the morning, different food, different culture and all that shit, but it’s not as if we’re living in the 40s; most kids should be used to all that nowadays. I seriously think there’s something wrong with Ben. I’ve always suspected it. He has a stunning ability for getting the wrong end of the stick all the time about everything. I think it has something to do with him being boiled alive as a kid. There was a kettle boiling on a stove when he was four or five, and it fell on him. He had to go to hospital. I don’t think his nerves have recovered. That’s my theory, anyway. We were using the Winnebago as a dressing room when we played in Tucson at the Congress Hotel and we’d been sat waiting for him and we were getting all edgy … you wonder what kinda mood is he gonna turn up in. Who’s he gonna go for tonight? Whose turn is it? For the first two nights I was golden bollocks. It was Steve and Spen. ‘You’re shit, you’re shit, him and me are the professionals …’ And at this gig in Tucson, he walked into the dressing room just in a really fucking stinking black mood. He took a bottle of wine out the dressing room, ‘What the fuck you looking at? What are you fucking looking at?!’ … And he just lifted his hand up and he’s got a corkscrew in his hand. And Spence had to grab him … we all kinda got out of the van and we left him in there to stew. I think somebody had told him that we’d all had a meeting about him and about his behaviour, y’know, you couldn’t go for a piss without somebody telling Mark and everything we did angered him. And we just wanted to get on with our jobs and we weren’t being allowed to do that. He’s like an old-fashioned gentleman fraud: semi-middle class. Cooks for his parents every Tuesday – chilli; goes to church once a month. Keeping up appearances. He makes me out to be some Dennis Wheatley horror character. Telling stories of how I’d wait for them on their days off in the hotel lobby, skulking. Then I’d jump out and ask if they’ve had anything to eat. That’s so Ben, that. I’d be having a drink in the lobby and they’d walk in and I’d ask them if they’d eaten, if they fancied a drink, if they were alright. Not in a motherly way – a simple question, basically. Nothing serious. We were driving down from Tucson to Phoenix, driving through the desert at 70 miles an hour, we’re in a Winnebago, or that kind of thing, nobody’s got a seatbelt on in the back … And Mark was pissed … and he just came wandering over, walking to the front of the bus and I was sat next to the driver with a map, giving this guy directions. You know, for some reason, Mark had made this guy the enemy. Before this guy has a chance to do his job, Mark was like, ‘You’re fuckin’ shit! I’m getting rid of him!’ But he doesn’t just sack him, he winds him up … Mark had a bottle of beer and I think he just poured a bit on this guy’s head … some people having a beer over their head could’ve gone off the road, just panicked, y’know, and with people walking around in the back, he could have killed everybody … And he walked up to the back of me with a lit cigarette in his hand and I could smell something burning and I’m sure he was at it with a cigarette at the back of my head, just cos I was helping this guy with directions. Tell him anything and he construes it in a paranoid way. I feel sorry for him. I did spill some beer over the driver. I did flick a bit of paper at him; because he was asleep. Why say things like that? Why’s he talking behind my back about me taking speed? It’s not as if I’m jacking up every day. He’s not the first. They enter a completely different world when they join The Fall. When they’re first in the group they’re just used to having a few pints on the weekend, then they see me with the double whiskys.